Bonus Sample: Post-Cult Shame

Conspirituality

Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker

Spirituality, Social Sciences, Religion & Spirituality, Science, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.2 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2021

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Survivor shame over what has been lost, and how one has been complicit. Apologist shame: turned inside out and externalized as aggression. Popular shaming, which tries to deflect attention from how close to home cultic dynamics really are. In the cult landscape, shame is a common denominator. In this contemplation, Matthew unpacks various aspects, with help from the writing of cult theorists and recovery counselors Alexandra Stein, Daniel Shaw, and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi. Show Notes Music: Spiegel im Spiegel and Pari Intervallo: Pärt Primo Levi: The Drowned and the Saved The Relational System of the Traumatizing Narcissist — Shaw Rachel Bernstein’s “One More Thing” at the end of Betrayal and Power w/ Nitai Joseph, former Hare Krishna — S4E5. All of Rachel Bernstein’s IndoctriNation podcast. What’s Behind the Blowback You’ll Get When You Engage Cult Members “Deception, Dependence, Dread of Leaving” — Langone “I Got Mine-ism” Selected Bibliography: Ainsworth, Mary D. Salter. Patterns of Attachment: a Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. Routledge, 2015. Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Penguin Classics, 2017. Freyd, Jennifer J. Betrayal Trauma: the Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse. Harvard University Press, 1998. Freyd, Jennifer J., and Pamela Birrell. Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Arent Being Fooled. Wiley, 2013. Hassan, Steven. Combating Cult Mind Control: the #1 Best-Selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults. Freedom of Mind Press, 2016. Kramer, Joel, and Diana Alstad. The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power. North Atlantic Books/Frog, 1993. Lalich, Janja, and Madeleine Landau. Tobias. Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships. Bay Tree Pub., 2006. Lalich, Janja. Escaping Utopia: Growing up in a Cult, Getting out, and Starting Over. Routledge, 2018. Langone, Michael D. Recovery from Cults: Help for Victims of Psychological and Spiritual Abuse. W.W. Norton, 1995. Lifton, Robert Jay. Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: a Study of “Brainwashing” in China.W.W. Norton, 1961. Miller, Alice -- -- -- Support us on Patreon Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a Glassbox Media Podcast.
0:08.5	Hello, Matthew here from the Conspirituality Podcast team.
0:12.5	The following is a sample of the bonus episode we produce every week for our Patreon subscribers.
0:18.8	You can support our work and have full access to bonus episodes and other premium content
0:23.7	by subscribing for as little as $5 a month at patreon.com slash
0:29.2	Conspirituality. Thanks for listening and your support which keeps us
0:34.0	ad-free and editorially independent.
1:04.3	We had a great question come into our DMs a while back.
1:18.8	The person wrote in to ask if we could reflect on the subject of what would help former cult members
1:26.0	overcome shame. This is evocative for me not only because I have personal experience with it
1:33.4	but because shame is the common emotional denominator that governs three different zones in the
1:41.4	cult landscape. The zone of survivors, the zone of apologists are those who are still enmeshed
1:50.1	and the zone of the general public. I'll say a little bit about each and then unpack from there.
1:57.8	First, survivor shame. Shame is a keynote in every conversation I have with people in cult
2:07.4	recovery whether I'm just lending an ear or I'm working on a story. In this zone you can hear
2:14.5	shame in its most direct and authentic form. People are coming to grips with lost time,
2:21.3	with deception and betrayal, with having alienated their families or neglected their children.
2:28.5	In the most acute cases they are taking an inventory of the harm they caused to other people in the
2:34.2	group. They're wondering whether to reach out. They're wondering what happened to the people
2:40.1	they recruited, to the people they actively hurt. Then there's apologist shame. This second
2:49.9	form of shame in the cult landscape doesn't actually look like shame at all.
2:56.4	It's turned inside out and then externalized in the form of aggression
	...

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